


Old News

by ThirdGenerationRockette



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Series, teenage mcavoys - Freeform, thomas pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 21:42:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirdGenerationRockette/pseuds/ThirdGenerationRockette
Summary: Taking a deep breath, he reads the story to the end, and he feels something he can't name take root in his stomach. Anger, disbelief, confusion, it's all of those things rolled into one and he doesn't know what to do with the information currently threatening to smash through his brain.





	Old News

It's not that he's been putting this assignment off, just that he knows it should be an easy one. His parents are pretty high profile, he gets that, and as much as his mom plays down the amount of information there is online about them, pushing the point home that if he wants facts he should come straight to them, he knows he can probably find at least some of what he needs with a little googling. He doesn't realise how loud he sighs as he opens his laptop until his mom looks up at him and raises an amused eyebrow.

"Everything okay over there?" she asks, looking up from her position on the floor to where he's sitting at the table. She's surrounded by newspapers as she so often is, even more so on Saturdays, when she really has time to pore over them properly.

"Yeah, I'm good," he says, with a faint shrug.

"What are you working on?" She takes what he assumes is the sports section, folds it, and pushes it aside before looking up at him.

"I have to choose a year and write about it from the point of view of one of my parents." He glances at her and she smiles, the smile that he knows means she wants to help, she'd _love_ to help, so he smiles back and waits to see if she can contain her urge to get involved.

"Sounds interesting," she says, and he knows she's biting her tongue, holding back the urge to start peppering him with information about which years would be good and why. "Can I help with anything?"

"Not for now, I'm going to do some research and think about it a little first, I think." He watches as she nods reaches for whichever section of the newspaper she's decided to tackle next.

"Well, you know where we are if you do decide you want some help." She glances across at him again and smirks. "Remember whatever your dad did, no matter what year it was, it was probably my idea, and also that I'm younger than him, so my memory is much more reliable than his. You know, if you do want to run anything by either of us."

"Got it." He returns her smirk, shaking his head slightly. "Thanks, Mom."

He knows what both of his parents' Wikipedia pages say, but he starts with them anyway, copying down the highlights first from his mom's, and then his dad's, a lot of information crossing over both pages, hardly a surprise when they worked together on so many big stories. He knew his dad broke the Bin Laden story, he knows all about the Genoa story, from the breaking of it right through to the retraction, and how it was his mom who figured out what had happened. And hell, pretty much everyone knows his dad proposed to his mom in the middle of the 2012 election broadcast. The urge to write about something slightly less obvious nags at him though, a year that didn't necessarily feature something groundbreaking, but would still be really intriguing to write, and hopefully to read. He looks at the dates his mom was overseas, the years she won her Peabody awards, before she married his dad, and way before he and Henry were born, by which point she was ACN president.

Stepping away from Wikipedia, he does what he never usually does and heads right for the total trash that is Page Six, and puts his surname into the search box. He expects a ton of hits directing him to stories about his dad, which is exactly what he does get, but he scrolls on until he spots something different, something where his mom seems to be mentioned first, so he clicks on the link and pulls up the story. It's archived (understandably considering it's a story from years ago), so there's no photo, just text and a headline that he reads three times before he can even start to wrap his brain around it.

He's halfway into the first paragraph when the door flies open and Henry comes crashing in, dumping his bag on the chair next to where he's sitting, before he carries on towards the kitchen. Even though he's heard a million times how Henry was the quiet, thoughtful one when they were younger, he can never quite believe it when he looks at his brother now.

"How was the game, Hen?" He hears his mom ask as his brother crosses the room, no doubt hungry, as he always is.

"Good, thanks, yeah," he says, calling back to her from where he's opening the fridge door and peering inside. "Dad's outside talking to Ben's dad. Can I eat whatever in here, Mom?"

"Anything but the chicken. That's for dinner." He hears her reply, and figures Henry will make short work of whatever else is in the fridge and still have room for dinner.

He's half listening to their exchange but his eyes are fixed firmly on what he's reading, because he can't process it, he's convinced it's bullshit, it _has_ to be. The story is about how his mom apparently sent everyone at ACN an email telling them she cheated on his dad. He can't believe what he's seeing...his mom _cheated_? It makes no sense, absolutely no sense at all, because his parents are happy, sickeningly happy. His dad looks at his mom like they just met, they hold hands in public, even though it embarrasses the hell out of him and Henry, and even though he can't bear to think about it, he knows they still...well, God, he knows they have sex.

"I'm going to take a shower." Henry walks by, distracting him for a second as he crams what looks like the remainder of a bagel into his mouth as he heads for the door.

"Henry, please don't take food into the bathroom," his mom says, sounding repulsed by the idea, even though it's something she has to tell his brother almost daily. "My God, anyone would think you were raised by wolves."

"It's cool, Mom, I'll be done eating it way before I get to the bathroom." Henry disappears out into the hallway as his mom sighs.

Taking a deep breath, he reads the story to the end, and he feels something he can't name take root in his stomach. Anger, disbelief, confusion, it's all of those things rolled into one and he doesn't know what to do with the information currently threatening to smash through his brain. According to the story, his mom somehow managed to send an email she intended to go to his dad to basically the whole fucking company, to literally thousands of people. In the email she said something about how she couldn't bear people thinking his dad was the one who cheated on her when it was actually the other way around.

"Mom, I found something weird here," he says, unable to stop himself from continuing, needing to know, hoping she can somehow tell him it's not true. "This story here says...well, it says you cheated on Dad? That can't be right, can it?"

"What?" She looks up at him and he sees something on her face he doesn't quite recognise, an expression he really, really hopes isn't guilt.

"I can't believe...wait, is this true, _did_ you?" He knows he's flipping out slightly, raising his voice louder at her than he should, but her lack of an instant denial is making him crazy. "Oh my God, Mom, how old were we, Henry and me? How could you even think...is it true?"

"Tom, no, you've got it all wrong, I didn't..." She pauses and looks suddenly afraid, the same way he feels as they both seem to realise what's happening. "No, that's not entirely true, I did, but it was way before you and Henry were born, before your dad and I were married-"

"Seriously?" He cuts her off, and he doesn't know whether he should be pleased she didn't lie or if he should be wishing she had. "You cheated on Dad, you never told him, and then you married him anyway? Well, that sounds like an awesome way to start a marriage!"

"It wasn't like that," she says, the firm tone he thinks she's aiming for let down by the faint tremor in her voice. "It wasn't like that at all, your father knew about it long before we were married, he didn't-"

"Dad _knew_?" Disbelief floods through him, the knowledge that not only did his mom cheat but his dad knew and married her anyway almost too much to take in. Slamming his laptop shut, he grabs it and gets to his feet. "Alright, I can't...I don't want to know, I can't hear any more."

"Honey, please, just listen." She scrambles to get up from her position on the rug, pushing the papers aside, but he's faster and is almost at the door before she makes it to her feet. "Let me explain."

He doesn't want to listen, and he doesn't know how the hell she thinks she can explain it. She cheated, his dad found out and still married her, and now he can't think straight, and he can't help wondering if she's done it since and because his dad loves her, he just turns a blind eye. As he pulls the door open and storms through, he stops just short of colliding with his dad, who frowns at him, clearly sensing something's going on, but confused about what.

"Hey, slow down, buddy." His dad rests a hand on his shoulder but he shrugs it off and keeps moving. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm fine!" He snaps, desperate to get out of the room, needing to be nowhere near either of his parents for now, until he can try to process what he just read.

Outside in the hallway, he stops and leans against the wall, willing himself to calm down, confused by the guilt tugging at the edges of his anger, which he knows is there because he so rarely fights with his mom, he never really has. His dad, yeah, they're too similar in temperament, both stubborn with a tendency to react without thinking at times, but his mom...well, his mom can be fiery too, and when she bickers with his dad they can go for what feels like hours, but with him it's different, they seem to complement each other and their relationship is a smooth one. Maybe that's why he's so mad, because he never expected something like this from her, and he can't equate this with who he knows her to be; his honest, ethical mom would never doing something like cheat on his dad. Or so he thought.

"What's going on?" He hears his dad's voice, curiosity overridden by gentle concern. "You okay?"

"I don't...no, not really." His mom's voice is quiet, it's clear she's upset, and a fresh pang of guilt runs through him. "He found something online, some old story or other, I guess, I don't know what, but he asked if I'd cheated on you."

"What the hell was he looking for? And how did he stumble across that?" His dad sounds more angry with _him_ for finding out than he does with his mom for the cheating, which really doesn't seem fair at all. "What did you tell him?"

"Well, I said no at first, and then I realised I really should just be honest, but I didn't get chance to explain because he kind of lost it at that point and asked me when it happened, and how old he was, and I told him it was long before he was born, before we were married, but I think that just made it worse, and..." She falls silent and he holds his breath, knowing he shouldn't be listening but unable to drag himself away. "Shit, Billy, why did this have to come up again after all this time?"

"Hey, it's okay, honey." His dad's soothing tone makes him feel guilty again, because it means his mom is upset, and he hates when she's upset. She's essentially superhuman, his mom, it takes a lot to make her cry, and even though he feels he has every right to be angry, he still doesn't like to think that he's hurt her. "We're talking about something that happened almost twenty-five years ago, and doesn't matter anymore, something that hasn't mattered in fucking forever."

"I know." She says nothing more and he's about to step away because he knows he really needs to just go and be alone for a while to think. "I just don't want him to..."

"Do you want me to talk to him?" His dad's voice stops him, and he wonders if his mom might say yes, if he's upset her to the point where she'll gladly send his dad in to talk to him.

"No, it's fine, I'll give him a little time and then I'll talk to him," his mom says, sounding slightly less rattled. "But the day Nina's name shows up in a google search, that one's all yours."

He has no idea who Nina is, and he doesn't even want to start pondering that when his mind is already swirling with thoughts of his parents being entirely different people than he thought they were, as dramatic a reaction as he knows that is. Managing to pull himself away from the wall, he heads down the hall and into the den, sitting down at the piano, knowing the only thing that can soothe him now is music.

He plays for a while, thinking of nothing but the sound, letting it calm him down, gradually moving from a fast, angry piece to something slower. He doesn't hear his mom come in but he isn't particularly surprised when she moves into his eye line and leans against the wall to watch him play. He finishes and closes the piano lid, resting his hands on top of it and refusing to look at her.

"Sounding good," she says quietly, sighing softly when he doesn't reply. "Alright, ask me whatever it is you want to know."

"Is there really any point?" He finally looks up at her, sees her arms folded tightly in front of her, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth. "You're probably just going to lie to me anyway, right?"

"You know me better than that." She moves away from the wall and sits down at the table across from the piano.

"I thought I did." He knows that was unnecessary, and as soon as he sees the look of hurt in her eyes he wishes he could take it back, yet there's still anger bubbling up inside him and he needs to get it out. "I just don't understand how you could have cheated on Dad, I mean, shit, that's assuming he even is my dad."

"Firstly, watch your language, and secondly, look in the mirror, Tom, those eyes are one hundred percent McAvoy," she says, absently twisting the rings on her finger, something he knows she only does when she's anxious or uncomfortable. He knows it's awful, but he's glad she's uncomfortable, he can't helping thinking it's only fair because it's also pretty fucking uncomfortable finding out your parents have been lying to you. "I know you're upset with me right now, but that kind of comment is way out of line."

"Fine, but you know what I don't get? I just don't get how Dad could know about this and be totally okay with it," he says, his anger again rising to the surface, his chest tightening as he thinks about this whole situation. "It was years ago or whatever, sure, but did Dad just go 'hey, these things happen, it's cool'?"

"You're right, it was _years_ ago, but no, your father definitely wasn't _cool_ with it." She shakes her head and lets out a long sigh. "Would you please come and sit with me so I can explain some things to you?"

"Things like what? How I'm just a stupid kid and I don't understand grown-up relationships?" He stands up and shoves his hands into his pockets, not oblivious to the fact it's what his dad does when he's angry too. "I understand enough to know that if you're with someone you probably shouldn't go out and fuck someone else."

"Tom, I said watch your language, and no, that's not even close to what I was going to say," she says, looking relieved when he starts to walk slowly over to where she's sitting, taking the chair furthest from her. "Because I know you're not stupid, I'd like to try and explain some of this stuff to you. Do you want to hear it from me or would you rather rely on the filthy annals of Page Six?"

"You, I guess." He knows he's sounding petulant, and exactly like the stupid kid he prides himself on not being, but he's still unable to take in that at some point his mom was unfaithful.

"Before I met your father, I was in a relationship for a long time, a kind of on and off relationship, I suppose, and certainly not one that was particularly good, or healthy, but I was young when I met Brian and I kind of thought that was just the way relationships were, I didn't really know I could wait for someone better, I just thought...anyway, we broke up and this time it seemed like it was for good." She pauses, raises her eyebrows, and when he says nothing she carries on. "And then I met your dad, and he was so completely the opposite, it was like he was from another species. He treated me so well, he genuinely wanted to be with me, and he was interested in me, in what I had to say, and I just...I panicked, I think, and I couldn't help thinking it was all too good to be true. You know your dad, he can be intense, and he's almost freakishly passionate when he knows he wants something, and I wasn't used to that, I didn't have a clue how to handle it, the attention, the way he was with me, he had these ways of doing things, he still does, he's just-"

"I don't get it, I don't get how you could go from dating a guy who was an asshole, to Dad, who sounds like he totally wasn't. An asshole, I mean. So what, you decide you don't actually like that, you don't want a guy who's good to you?" he asks, wondering for the first time if he really is too much of a kid to even try to make sense of this. "It's weird, Mom, is all."

"I know how this sounds, and I hate to think about all of this, because it's..." She bites her lip and glances down at her hands, picks awkwardly at her thumbnail with her index finger. "Well, at first I was just using your dad to make Brian jealous, so when he heard I was dating your dad and he called, I thought it had worked, I thought-"

"Using Dad to make some other dude jealous?" It's like he's hearing his mom talk about someone else entirely, and it's hard to hear, so he snaps. "Real classy, Mom."

"I'm not proud of it, Tom. And you know what? You'll do things you're not proud of too, and you'll realise that what matters is how you make up for those things, how you make it right again." She sounds sad, and another stab of guilt cuts through his anger as she takes a deep breath and looks back up at him. "I thought getting back with Brian was what I wanted, so for a little while when he called that's what I did, except it _didn't_ feel like what I wanted, it felt wrong, but I didn't know why, until I realised one day that your father was the one I wanted, he was the _only_ one I wanted. So, I broke it off with Brian, and that was it, I never saw him again."

"But that was, like, a million years ago?" He frowns at her, confused by the whole story, the fact that it clearly was way back when his parents first started dating, just like she tried to tell him earlier before his temper got the better of him. "I mean, you and Dad met years before you got married, right?"

"Eight years, yeah." She gives him a tentative smile, one that slips a fraction when he doesn't return it. "Do you know when I realised I was in love with your father? Or, _how_ I realised, I guess?"

"I know Dad always says he fell in love with you as soon as he met you, which is, like, so embarrassing, I mean, seriously, he has zero chill." He always just assumed his mom had fallen for his dad right away too, he's realising now that obviously wasn't the case.

"Yeah, it took me a little longer, but once I was in, I was _in_ ," she says, smiling again, but at her memory this time, rather than as an attempt to make him smile. "I was at his apartment one night, and it had been a really busy week, and I remember kind of half falling asleep on the couch next to him. The next thing I knew he was sliding a big fluffy pair of socks onto my feet, and when I questioned him he just said my feet were cold, like what else would he have done? And that was it, right then I just knew, and we-"

"Oh God, Mom, you're not going to tell me something gross, like that's the first time you slept together, are you?" He screws up his nose, it's bad enough to know his parents _still_ have sex, without being put through the horror of hearing about their first time. "'Cos I really don't-"

"Oh no, we'd been sleeping together plenty by that point, sweetie," she says, glancing at her ring finger again, a faint smile on her face. "What hit me that night was that I was completely, totally, head over heels in love with him, and I have been ever since."

"So you've never..." He chooses to ignore the mention of his parents' sex life, but he can't quite get past everything else she just told him, and he's fairly sure he knows the answer to this question, but he has to ask anyway. "You've never done it again, right?"

"Tom, no, _never_ , I swear to you." She reaches out and grabs his hand, squeezing so hard he almost has to ask her to let go. "What I did, I did way back when we were first dating, and I was coming off the back of a relationship that had gone on longer than it should, and I didn't think it was...I started dating your dad for all the wrong reasons, but I fell in love with him for all the _right_ ones, and once I knew I loved him that never changed. But I know how much I hurt him, how badly I hurt him, and even after he forgave me, it took me a long, long time to forgive _myself_. I would never do anything like that to him again, and it's really important that you know that."

"Okay." He nods and she loosens her grip on him slightly, but when she keeps hold of his hand he wonders if she's afraid he doesn't believe her. "Mom..."

"It's okay," she says, giving his hand a final squeeze before pulling back. "I know you're not happy with me right now and your brain is probably ready to explode, so I'm going to give you some space, but if there's anything else you want to talk about, I want you to come and find me. There's something I want to show you first though."

He watches as she heads for the small dresser in the corner of the room, opening one of the drawers and rifling through the contents until she apparently finds what she's looking for, bringing whatever it is back to where he's still sitting at the table. She smiles and puts three flash drives down in front of him, each labelled neatly with a different year; 2005, 2013, and 2017.

"Pictures?" He picks up the one marked 2005, his curiosity piqued by never having seen any of their photos from that early, despite his mom's freakish need to document every moment of his and Henry's entire lives.

"Don't think I don't know that you roll your eyes at my obsession with taking and keeping photos of everything, but I thought maybe you might want to see these. I mean, it's up to you, I just thought..." She pauses and picks up the drive marked 2013, the one he is familiar with because it's the year his parents were married. "Look at them or don't, but I swear your dad and I are every bit as happy as we seem in all of these pictures."

He nods as she puts down the drive that was in her hand, but he doesn't say anything, and he can't quite work out how he feels as she turns and heads for the door. There's a big part of him that just wants to ask her not to go, that wants to apologise for overreacting, but there's enough of him still bathed in confusion that he says nothing and watches her walk out of the room.

His laptop is on the corner of the table, exactly where he dumped it before sitting down at the piano, so he reaches for it and starts with the 2005 drive, smiling slightly when he sees everything is in named folders, nothing less than he would expect from his mom, never anything other than organised. Some of the names give only vague clues about the contents, 'Beach- July', 'Annapolis- July', while others are much more clear, 'Mum and Dad's visit- Sept', and the one he decides to click on first, 'Paris birthday trip- Oct'. His first thought is that his mom and dad look so young, his second that she was right, they do look happy, _really_ happy. They seem to have done all the normal things tourists do, there is a photo of them at the Eiffel Tower, and outside the Louvre, and his dad must have managed to wrestle the camera from his mom at some point because there are a good few of her on her own, smiling at him. He opens the September folder next and clicks on the first image showing his parents and grandparents, at dinner he guesses, and his mom's grin is as wide as he's ever seen, while his dad's smile looks like one of relief. September 2005...he wonders if this was the first time his dad met his grandparents, it would definitely make sense of the relieved smile. He loves his grandma but he doesn't think she would have stood for any crap if she hadn't been impressed by his dad.

2013 is next, and he's seen their wedding pictures plenty of times so he skips that folder and goes right to the one marked 'Correspondents Dinner- April'. In the first photo, his mom and dad are holding hands, both in formal wear, his mom in a long black dress, his dad in a tux, and his first thought is of how great they both look, followed by the realisation that his mom was, like, super pretty back in the day. 'Halloween- 2017' catches his attention next, and he can't help smiling at the first picture. He's dressed as a jellyfish and Henry is a spider, and they're both grinning widely, clearly excited about their costumes. His eyes widen at the next photo, which he recognises as having been taken at Leona's house, and it's of all four of them, their parents are dressed as Batman and Catwoman, and his mom is wearing the highest boots he's ever seen.

He hears the door open and when he looks up he sees his dad step inside the room, a faint frown on his face as he closes the door behind him. Before his dad says a word, he feels his defences go up, and he decides he should just start the inevitable conversation and get it the hell over with.

"I'm guessing you've talked to Mom, and now you're pissed at me," he says, breathing a heavy sigh as his dad sits down at the table with him. "So go ahead, yell at me. I figure that's why you're in here."

"Yeah, I talked to your mom, but I'm not in here to yell at you." His dad is calm, his voice completely level, and he wonders again why he's so worked up over this when his dad obviously isn't fazed at all. "I'm in here because I know your mother, I know she will have been totally honest with you, and I thought maybe you might want to talk about it with me too."

"What is there to say, Dad, really? The way Mom tells it is that you were, like, totally full-on from the day you met her, but she was only dating you to make some other dude jealous, which totally worked, I guess, given she ended up f-" He pauses and checks his language just in time, even though his dad's raised eyebrow tells him he knows exactly what he was about to say. "She ended up with him behind your back for a while. I mean, she says the minute she realised it was you she was into, she dumped him, but how do I even know if that's true? How do I-"

"You know what, Tom? You're a smart kid, so I'm going to be honest with you, just like your mom was." His dad's glance flicks briefly to the Halloween photo on the screen, before he looks back at him. "I get that you're freaking out because you and your mom are close, and I guess it'd be nice to think you knew everything about your parents, right? But this is something that happened almost ten years before you were born, and you got the tabloid trash version of it, from where, Page Six?"

"Yeah." He nods and his dad shakes his head but there's a hint of a smile on his face. "But that's why I asked Mom, so she could tell me what really happened."

"So now you have your mom's version of events, sure, but you have no idea about the rest of it. All you heard was that your mom cheated, so you assume that makes _her_ the one in the wrong. You can't judge people for what they did before you knew them, before you were even born, in this case." Pausing, his dad runs a hand through his hair, before going on. "Things like this aren't clean cut, Tom. You don't know any of what happened next, of what I did in response, how much I hurt your mom, and you don't need to know because it's actually none of your business. I mean, hell, I'm sorry you had to stumble across this crap but I don't even know how to begin to tell you how totally irrelevant it is. Your mom and me have been together for seventeen years, we love each other, we love you, and that's really the only thing that you and Henry need to know."

"So, basically, you're saying both of my parents are assholes, just in different ways?" The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, but his dad surprises him by letting out a short laugh.

"Your mom made a mistake, _I_ was an asshole," his dad says, firmly. "But yeah, every kid has to find out one day that their parents aren't perfect, and I guess today is your day, son."

"Is this the part where you tell me I have to apologise to Mom?" He bites his lip as he realises that he does need apologise to her, he just doesn't particularly want to do it because his dad says he should.

"I'm not going to tell you to apologise," his dad answers, but he senses he's not done. "And do you know why?"

"Because I don't have a damn thing to be sorry for?" He wishes he could just think before he speaks but he can't seem to manage it right now.

"Because you're old enough and smart enough to know when you should apologise without having to be told." His dad sounds disappointed, and he hates that he's managed to upset his mom _and_ disappoint his dad all in one day. Way to go, Tom. "I don't need to tell you that the way you spoke to your mom earlier was way out of line, I know you're well aware of that, so what I _am_ going to suggest you do is to think about that before you go and talk to her."

He nods but doesn't respond, knowing his dad's right, that he doesn't ever speak to his mom the way he did today, and that's why he feels so guilty for the things he said to her, and the tone he took. He knows he upset her, he saw it in her eyes and heard it in her voice, and he hates himself for it. For a few seconds there is a loaded silence and he wonders if his dad has something else to say, so he's relieved when what he does do is point at the laptop with a faint smile on his face.

"You wanted to be a sheep originally, that year," his dad says as he looks at the photo on the screen. "Henry wanted to be a spider from the minute we asked him, so he was the easy one, but you seemed set on a sheep for a little while."

"I guess a jellyfish at least has some scary elements," he says, looking at the huge domed hat he was wearing, and the strings of long tentacles. "For Mom, at least."

"Yeah, you liked the idea of being a jellyfish because you figured if your mom was afraid of them, then they _must_ be terrifying." He sees his dad smile a little wider at the photo, and possibly a little bit at the memory too. "But the one thing you were worried about was scaring your mom. I had to convince you we'd make sure she knew it was you and not an actual jellyfish. The costumes worked though, look at the two of you."

"God, Dad, look at the two of you!" He manages a faint smile back before turning again to look at the picture, at his dad in a full Batman suit, and his mom as Catwoman beside him.

"I know," his dad says with a nod, the look in his eyes the same one he gets when he sees his mom dressed up for their Friday date nights, a look Tom absolutely refuses to think too deeply about. "I don't know how your mom could even walk in those boots, let alone carry Henry around half the night, but you know your mom, superwoman."

"I think you're confusing your superheroes, Dad, but yeah, I know." He watches his dad stand up, and feels him squeeze his shoulder before he starts to move away from the table. A thought enters his head that comes out of his mouth before he can stop it. "Sometimes I wonder if Mom wishes we were still little."

"Maybe a little bit this afternoon, yeah, but not usually, no," his dad says, smiling and turning back to him. "I'm taking Henry to get new sneakers, if you want to come?"

"Again?" He's asking because it seems like his brother needs new sneakers, like, every week.

"The kid grows a mile a minute, I swear." His dad shrugs and repeats his question. "You want to come?"

"Nah, I'm good, thanks," he says, shrugging and thinking that his dad and Henry being out of the apartment for a couple of hours will give him chance to think and maybe to talk to his mom. "I'm going to just...you know, I have the school thing to do."

"Alright, see you later." With a final nod, his dad turns and heads for the door.

Closing the folder, her removes the flash drive and shuts the laptop, and as he returns the drives to the drawer his mom took them from, he starts to think about how he may have overreacted, how his dad's right, it really doesn't matter about what happened ten years before he was born. Even though he still feels unsettled about it, he knows it's just because he's always put his mom up on something of a pedestal, and he needs to accept that if this is ancient history to his parents then it sure as shit has nothing to do with him. He also needs to chill the hell out and realise that just because his mom made a mistake, it doesn't make her any less amazing.

If his dad and Henry are headed out, that means his mom is around somewhere, probably working if she's been left alone anywhere near a computer, so maybe he can ask if she wants to help with this assignment. He figures it's not quite the apology he's working up to, but it's a start...

He peeks into the living room first but it's empty so he keeps going, assuming she's either still on the floor in the dining room with a heap of newspapers, or she's- he stops suddenly in the hallway when he realises he's found her. She's standing in the kitchen with his dad and they look like they're in the middle of something, not a fight (hell, he'd have heard them if they were fighting), but a conversation that, if he's honest, he knows was likely triggered by his behaviour. His dad has one hand on his mom's waist, and other under her chin, tilting her face towards him in the way he knows he does when she's not listening, or when she's telling him what she thinks he wants to hear. There's a frown on his mom's face, but it lifts slightly when his dad says something he can't hear, and he watches as she smiles, a smile mirrored on his dad's face.

She says something else and nods as his dad leans down and gives her a quick kiss before he steps back. He hears Henry slam his bedroom door and knows he's going to be heading this way to look for their dad, so he takes a breath and walks into the kitchen.

"Hey," he says, looking at his dad first, then tentatively in his mom's direction. "I think Henry's ready, Dad."

His dad smiles as he passes, and it isn't until he hears the apartment door shut that he realises his mom is in her running gear, not what she was wearing earlier. He also knows she runs on weekday mornings and sometimes on Sundays, but not usually on Saturdays.

"You're going for a run?" As soon as he asks, he thinks what a stupid question it is, considering it's clear that's exactly what she's about to do.

"Yeah, I thought I would," she says, nodding at him before sitting down to tighten the laces in her sneakers. "Just a short one, I think."

"You never run on a Saturday unless you're mad and need to cool off, and that's usually when Dad's done something dumb," he says, certain it isn't his dad she's mad at. "It's me, right? You're mad at me."

"I'm not mad at you, Tom." She smiles at him and he has to admit she doesn't look at all mad.

"So, um, maybe..." He decides to go for it, he wants to talk to her, and he kind of doesn't want to sit around waiting while she goes out running. "If you could hang on while I change, maybe I could run with you?"

"Sure." Her smile grows wider and she nods at him. "That'd be nice."

He changes quickly, and makes his way back towards the kitchen, but his mom is in the hallway already, sliding a credit card into the pocket in the back of her running pants, and reaching for her keys. They've just made it outside and to the bottom of their steps when she starts laughing, and he can't lie, he's totally confused, turning to her with a baffled frown.

"I didn't really want to run." She shrugs and lets out another laugh. "I just thought maybe I should get out of the apartment for a while so you could have some time to think without seeing my face and getting annoyed at me all over again."

"Well, I didn't want to run either, I just wanted to talk to you, really," he says, relieved because he fucking hates running.

"I did wonder...I mean, no offence, honey, but of my boys you're really not the runner." She smirks at him and he laughs because, hell, she's not wrong. "Communication, McAvoy style. How about we go and get coffee instead?"

They're halfway down their block when she stops suddenly and turns to him, biting her lip and shaking her head as if she's decided against whatever she was about to say, before carrying on walking.

"Mom?" He knows he should just say it, that he's sorry, that he overreacted, and that nothing that she could do would change how much he loves that she's his mom, and he's about to when she does speak.

“I’m going to let you into a secret…when you have kids, nobody issues you with an instruction book. When your kids are little, you basically just have to keep them alive, feed them, change them, try not to drop them on their heads too often. I was pretty good at that.” She smiles in the way she does when she’s clearly remembering a time when they were small, and he realises her job as their mom must be so different now to how it was then. “But then suddenly they can do all of that stuff for themselves and what they need from their parents is completely different. It’s like one day you wake up and you don’t have two little boys anymore, you have two young adults, and they’re smart and independent, and just… _brilliant_ , but it’s harder than it was when the main thing was to just make sure they- you -didn’t eat too much candy, or didn’t trip over your own feet almost constantly-“

“Henry?” He offers up a faint grin, feeling somehow relieved when she returns it.

“Yeah,” she says with a nod. “Seriously, I don’t know how he doesn’t break a bone on that football field every damn week. Anyway, what I’m trying to say, and I really don’t know if I’m supposed to do this or if I’m meant to act like I always know exactly what I’m doing, but I’ve never done this before, so I’m afraid you and your brother are my test cases, my unfortunate guinea pigs. I don’t know if there are rules about what kids should know about who their parents were before they were born, all I can tell you is that yes, your father and I had lives before you came along, and as your grandma always says, things weren't always rainbows and jam sandwiches-“

“I love that grandma says that as if jam sandwiches are a _good_ thing.” He screws up his face at the thought, but he knows what she’s saying, or at least he thinks he does. “I think I just…I mean, I’m not totally dumb, I know your lives didn’t start when we came along, and I shouldn’t have flipped out like that, but it was, like, the last thing I expected to find, you know? You and Dad are so close, and so happy, I just saw that story and I guess I freaked out.”

“I know, honey. You get _that_ from your father, by the way. Not so much now, he’s mellowed over the years, but God, if conclusion jumping was an Olympic sport, there was a time your father could have been a real contender.” She grins at him and he relaxes a little as she takes a breath and continues. “What I hope you’re getting from this is that yes, before we got married, your dad and I had a bit of a tangled history, but because it went so spectacularly wrong the first time, when we did finally work things out there was no way either of us was going to do a damn thing to risk what we had. Now, listen, I know you’re a fifteen year-old boy, so what I’m about to say is probably going make you squirm, but I’m going to say it anyway. I love your dad, I love him as passionately as I did twenty-five years ago, and I’m going to love him until the day we die- together, as it happens, hit by a freak tornado when I’m ninety-four and he’s a hundred and six, just so you know-“

“Mom, did anyone _ever_ sit you down and tell you you’re totally nuts?” He watches as something like pride crosses her face, and he doesn’t know if it’s in her own eccentricity or in him for calling her out on it.

He has the sudden urge to hug her, because she’s reminding him all over again of why she’s amazing. She’s basically a genius but she never pretends to know everything, and she’s never scared to admit when she hasn’t a clue about something. He’s ashamed of himself now for how he behaved earlier, and for ignoring everything his parents ever said about reading trashy websites and insisting on asking them instead if he ever wanted to know anything. He shouldn't have assumed the worst, and he wishes he could just get better at trusting his instinct, the instinct that if he'd just calmed the hell down would have told him that he knows his parents are happy, that they love each other, and they love him and Henry, and that's all that matters.

“Oh, it's been said, I just never really listened,” she says, pointing at the Starbucks in front of them, heading for the door when he nods his agreement, but stopping just outside and turning to him. "I don't want you to think we were keeping things from you, Tom. Deliberately, I mean. That's not what this was at all."

"I know that." He opens the door for her to walk through, following closely behind. "I guess, like I said, it just wasn't what I was expecting to see, you know?"

"I understand that, but if you can try to see it from my point of view, it's something that happened so long ago I don't even think about it anymore, because it's so irrelevant to my life now, to _our_ lives, and I hadn't even thought about the possibility of it showing up somewhere as brand new information for you." She pauses and they let a woman go ahead of them to join the line as they talk. "If there's ever anything else...if something else shows up online, or wherever, please just ask one of us about it, I promise there's nothing we won't talk about if it's bothering you, okay?"

"Sure, yeah...thanks, Mom." He smiles at her and she squeezes his arm as she looks up at him. "So, you know you said when we were little, it was your job to make sure we didn't eat too much candy?"

"I have a feeling I know where this is going, so I should remind you that it's _still_ my job." He watches as she frowns suddenly before digging around in her back pocket, her smile returning when she pulls out her credit card. "I like your smile, and if all your teeth fell out, I'd be devastated, but go on."

"Well, I'm not little anymore, and I was thinking a Frappuccino sounds pretty good about now..." He's pretty sure he knows what she'll have, the same as always, iced double shot Americano with just a touch of milk, although she might surprise him, she often does.

"No, you're definitely not little anymore," she says, grinning at him, making a show of the fact she has to look up to meet his eyes. "It's been a weird afternoon, I think your dentist and my thighs will forgive us our Frappuccinos, don't you?"

"Oh yeah, I think so." He smiles as they join the line, and he feels the majority of his guilt lifting as he stands beside her, but there's one thing he needs to do to shift the remainder, so he takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Mom."


End file.
